Gone Home review – Reader’s Feature

A reader takes a look at one of the most ambitious new indie games of recent weeks and what may be the best interactive story of the year.

There’s no place like home apparently; except in the case of Gone Home. It’s midsummer, 1995 and Kaitlin Greenbriar has just returned home after a long trip across Europe to her parent’s new home in Portland, USA. A note stuck to the front door from her sister, Sam, informs Katie that there is nobody home and that she shouldn’t go looking for any answers. Clearly, something is amiss. Katie has gone home but the rest of the family has gone missing and what ceases to be a fond return turns into a two hour search for the truth in one of the most interesting adventure games to be released this year.

There’s no denying that Gone Home is a unique game. It’s hard to draw a perfect comparison but in many ways it is reminiscent of games such as Dear Esther, The 7th Guest, To the Moon, and Virtual Springfield all at once. It’s an exploration game which some essence of puzzle-solving and a story like that of a visual novel. During the beginning moments it twists and turns from one direction to the next suggesting that it could be drama, mystery or even horror.

The game takes place entirely within the confines of the Greenbriar family mansion. The house is befit with several bathrooms, several hallways, several bedrooms, a basement, a library and a locked attic room. It’s a spacious abode but normal enough with the exception of the strange atmosphere which hovers around.

You begin the game roaming the house looking for any clues and hidden messages which may give you clues about the whereabouts of your family. There are no navigational tools to tell you where to go or where to look beyond your own insatiable, inquisitive, instinctive thought. Roaming through the house, you feel small by comparison – which invites child-like fascination with the environment and, during the beginning moments, you move towards some strange ideas about what may have happened.

The time in which the story takes place (1995) plays a large part in the experience because Gone Home is clearly trying to channel some nostalgic value. The Greenbriars’ are well equipped with the technology of the day but by modern standards the house feels archaic. The important factor is that the house feels detached, sort of like when you disconnect your Internet and suddenly feel as if you are at one with nature. The result works well in promoting a surprisingly familiar and almost comforting setting for anybody who is able to tell the difference between a video and a cassette tape.

The gameplay aspects of Gone Home prove to be a little bit more difficult aspect to appreciate. They almost exclusively involve picking up household items, inspecting and reading through information. At times, you’ll find an item and then be interrupted with an audio log detailing some personal thoughts or background information but other than this there are no action set pieces or moments of intense drama to witness. Instead, the game is focused on utilising the power of exploration rather than testing a player’s dexterity or logical-thinking skills.

For instance, the first puzzle in Gone Home involves finding the key for a locked door. It is an underwhelming ordeal which takes all of five seconds to figure out and you soon realise that this will sum up much of Gone Home’s gameplay. There are choice puzzle-like moments such as when you are asked to find hidden codes for safes and lockers and keys for hidden doors and compartments but they are never testing. A game such as Gone Home may have benefitted from harder puzzles but it is so fiercely loyal to getting the player to experience its story with ease that it doesn’t seem keen to deliver.

This lack of compromise for the story becomes understandable the longer the game goes on. The story comes to fruition with its use of theme, narrative, plot, characters and setting and it must be said that it is a remarkably well told tale which is surprisingly well paced. Exploring the house and finding important bits of information allows the player to feel involved and you learn greatly about the Greenbriars’ as a family – their history, their individual thoughts and feelings, their ambitions and their subsequent downfalls during the game.

The story soon becomes deeply involved at a character level and you end up with an informational jigsaw puzzle to piece together. The family are important but the real star of the show is Sam: a precocious teenage girl who is going through a set of… changes.

Through our super-sleuthing we find out that Sam is going to attend a Liberal Arts college, that she likes video games, that she is becoming interested in politics, that she went to see Pulp Fiction last Wednesday, that she writes fictional stories about pirates and, most importantly, that she has made some new friends. We do not learn these things by talking to her as we usually would but instead by discovering written notes, recorded music, creative stories and audio logs that she has made and that have been scattered throughout the house. These seemingly trivial bits of information become gravely important to the bigger picture and the manner in which we become learn things becomes a very intimate affair.

Rarely do video games place as much importance into story, character development and world-building as Gone Home does. When the player learns the truth about things they do so by feeling as if they have learned things for themselves; from interacting with the surroundings and ultimately by their own mad dash for truth.

Whilst there are many up sides to this, it is perhaps where the crux of Gone Home’s problems lay. You have control but so little of it and you are in effect nothing more than a human being with hands that can pick up objects, eyes which can inspect them and ears which can listen to key narrative information. The game feels as if it is placing a lot of trust in the player to feel engaged by taking on such basic tasks in a hope they are emotionally invested in the story it offers.

In doing this, Gone Home has displaced a lot of how we have learned to care about video games. Rather than feel big, the player feels small and of marginal importance. This is clever because it reflects Katie’s position as an average teenager as opposed to some over-powered video game character but with so much emphasis on story, the result is that Gone Home will fail if no attachment is created. With a story that speaks towards social concerns we can admire the distinctiveness but it may well lack a cutting universal appeal beyond identifiable aspects like angst, individuality and rebellion.

Gone Home is clearly a labour of love and it seems that Fullbright Company have learned a lot since their time spent on Minerva’s Den. The game is primarily, and perhaps exclusively, interested in presenting a story through player interaction and is backed up with both good intentions and good design. Gone Home does more than most video games to tell a story whilst promoting the player’s involvement in it but you can’t help but feel the story will either work or fail to hook a player, providing little middle ground. The end result is a unique game which concentrates on getting the small things right.

In Short: An interesting take on the quirks of family life which offers fresh perspective on how a video game can present a story. The gameplay is minimal and deviates from conventional standards which is sure to cut the appeal down for many players.

Pros: Likely to be one of the most unique games this year. The story is constructed to play into the hands of the player themselves and it is one of the few games which presents good pacing structure.

Cons: Little to no challenge. The £14.99 asking price is steep considering the game’s short length and its lack of replay value. The social subject material may be off-putting to some.

Score: 7/10

By reader By M North

The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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